Then suddenly she smiled--a glittering infectious smile, to which unconsciously all the faces near her responded.

"I have been reading the book you lent me!" she said, addressing Mr.Ferrier.
"Well ?" "I'm too stupid--I can't understand it." Mr.Ferrier laughed.
"I'm afraid that excuse won't do, Miss Alicia.

You must find another." She was silent a moment, finished her cake, then took some grapes, and began to play with them in the same conscious provocative way--till at last she turned upon her immediate neighbor, a young barrister with a broad boyish face.
"Well, I wonder whether _you'd_ mind ?" "Mind what ?" "If your father had done something shocking--forged--or murdered--or done something of that kind--supposing, of course, he were dead." "Do you mean--if I suddenly found out ?" She nodded assent.
"Well!" he reflected; "it would be disagreeable!" "Yes--but would it make you give up all the things you like ?--golfing--and cards--and parties--and the girl you were engaged to--and take to slumming, and that kind of thing ?" The slight inflection of the last words drew smiles.

Mr.Ferrier held up a finger.
"Miss Alicia, I shall lend you no more books." "Why?
Because I can't appreciate them ?" Mr.Ferrier laughed.
"I maintain that book is a book to melt the heart of a stone." "Well, I tried to cry," said the girl, putting another grape into her mouth, and quietly nodding at her interlocutor--"I did--honor bright.
But--really--what does it matter what your father did ?" "My _dear!_" said Lady Lucy, softly.

Her singularly white and finely wrinkled face, framed in a delicate capote of old lace, looked coldly at the speaker.
"By-the-way," said Mr.Ferrier, "does not the question rather concern you in this neighborhood?
I hear young Brenner has just come to live at West Hill.